The Kwong way to cook

Australian chef Kylie Kwong

Australian chef and author Kylie Kwong would once say she ate anything and everything, but a recent trip to Shanghai and Hong Kong put paid to that.

"I admit now that I saw some things that I will not eat - cockroaches, scorpions, worms and cane toads. Not little frogs, but great big cane toads."

Sydneysider Kwong, 36, a fifth-generation Australian-born Chinese, is a celebrity in Australia for her modern take on traditional Chinese cooking. Her trip was for research and to add a little spice to her television series Kylie Kwong: Simple Chinese Cooking, a follow-up to Cooking with Heart and Soul, which has screened here on Sky's Living Channel.

Kwong says visiting Asia was an ideal way to to pass on to viewers a feel for the food. As well, it was an adventurous cultural change.

As the title suggests, the byword is simplicity - all the recipes she cooks in the studio can be made with ingredients available from the supermarket.

As for the basics you should always have on hand to cook Chinese food, Kwong recommends soy sauce, dry sherry, sesame or peanut oil, oyster sauce, white sugar and salt.

Aucklanders will have the chance to see Kwong's cooking firsthand when she makes her first trip to New Zealand to demonstrate at the Food Show at the Auckland Showgrounds in early August. She plans to show a range of Chinese cooking techniques, including steaming, stir-frying, deep-frying and poaching and pickling.

"Cooking is an art and you use all your senses to do it," Kwong says. "You use your eyes when you cook it."

As well as the obvious sense of taste, Kwong says the sounds you hear are all part of cooking. "It's something my mum taught me - it's the sound of the oil in the wok. It makes a certain sizzle when it's the right temperature."

When she was at high school, Kwong wanted to be an artist, but she started her working life in the advertising industry, interrupted by a short stint in antique furniture restoration. It was while working for a client with a catering business that she found her true vocation - cooking. She honed her skills at Restaurant Manfredi, then at Neil Perry's top-class Sydney restaurants Rockpool and Wockpool.

Kwong's cooking prowess came as no surprise because cooking and food have always been a big part of her life. Her mother and her grandmothers are renowned cooks and, as a child, she spent many hours hanging around at her Uncle Jimmy's noodle factory.

Now some of that family history is enjoyed by diners at Billy Kwong, the restaurant Kwong and business partner Bill Granger - who is also appearing at The Food Show - run in Sydney's Surry Hills.

Billy Kwong serves the homemade Chinese pickle made from a recipe handed down in Kwong's family. The carrot, cucumber, white and red radish and cabbage dish is salted overnight and then pickled for a week.

All the restaurant's dishes are based on traditional Chinese cooking, with the emphasis on "balance between flavour, texture and the simplicity of ingredients and produce".

Quality is always paramount and diners enjoy only the best prawns and wonton wrappers. None of the seafood has been frozen, only organic chicken is used, and there is no genetically modified food, MSG or cornflour. Even the way food is sliced bears the hallmarks of Kwong's classical French training.

Kwong doesn't hesitate when asked her all-time favourite Chinese dish. It's black bean and chilli crab.

Kylie Kwong's demonstrations at the Food Show will be at 1.15pm on August 5 and 10.45am on August 7.